Common Destiny: Rhetorical Constructions of U.S. Masculine Nationalism from the Boy Scouts to President Bush Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation Authors Jones, Leigh Ann Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 30/09/2021 03:00:18 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193588 1 COMMON DESTINY: RHETORICAL CONSTRUCTIONS OF U.S. MASCULINE NATIONALISM FROM THE BOY SCOUTS TO PRESIDENT BUSH by Leigh Ann Jones _____________________ Copyright © Leigh Ann Jones 2007 A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY WITH A MAJOR IN RHETORIC, COMPOSITION, AND THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH In the Graduate College THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA 2007 2 THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Leigh Ann Jones entitled Common Destiny: Rhetorical Constructions of U.S. Masculine Nationalism from the Boy Scouts to President Bush and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy _______________________________________________________________________ Date: 07/17/2006 Ken S. McAllister _______________________________________________________________________ Date: 07/17/2006 Roxanne Mountford _______________________________________________________________________ Date: 07/17/2006 Laura Briggs Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement. ________________________________________________ Date: 07/17/2006 Dissertation Director: Ken S. McAllister 3 STATEMENT BY AUTHOR This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library. Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder. SIGNED: Leigh Ann Jones 4 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I have completed this dissertation because I could rely on energy beyond my own. I thank my committee members, Dr. Ken McAllister, Dr. Roxanne Mountford, and Dr. Laura Briggs, for making this process a learning opportunity and for wanting to see it succeed. I especially thank Ken for appreciating the transformative possibilities of academia, and for consistently seeing beyond the academy and personal academic accomplishment. I would not have considered writing a dissertation except for Victor Villanueva, Jr., whose phenomenal support of his students convinced me that academia was for me, and that a sense of humor would be a great asset along the way. I thank Nathalie Kuroiwa-Lewis, Erica Reynolds Clayton, Kimberly Helmer, and Jill McCracken for generously providing careful feedback that helped with my drafting process. And I thank the friends who reminded me that my life is larger than this dissertation: Arianne Burford for hiking with me nearly every Saturday for a year, talking at some times, and walking in silence at others; Sonja Perez, for helping me remain sane and optimistic, Thomas Kinney, whose approach to rhetoric is inspiring, and Wendy Weise for laughing with me. I thank Sung for coming to my defense, so to speak, with the things that matter. He gets his own paragraph. And I thank my family: my mom and dad, who understand what this means to me; and my sister Kim, who I greatly admire. 5 To my parents 6 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT....................................................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION................................................................................... 9 1.1 LITERATURE REVIEW............................................................................................... 13 1.2 THE DIALECTIC OF MASCULINIST-RACIST NATIONALISM: METHODS AND RATIONALE ............................................................................................................................... 26 1.3 OUTLINE OF CHAPTERS............................................................................................. 30 CHAPTER 2: MAKING THE NATION MORE "BOY-MINDED": THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY................... 32 2.1 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 32 2.2 THE ORIGINS OF THE BOY SCOUTS OF AMERICA: ROOSEVELT AND THE RHETORIC OF WHITENESS............................................................................................................. 37 2.3 THE BOY SCOUT UNIFORM AND SANCTIONED “SAVAGERY”.................................... 45 2.4 THE ROLE OF MILITARISM IN BSA RHETORIC .......................................................... 49 2.5 THE BOY SCOUTS AND THE CRISIS OF CAPITALISM AT THE TURN OF THE TWENTIETH- CENTURY ............................................................................................................... 52 2.6 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................ 58 CHAPTER 3: THE SHIFT TOWARD A RHETORIC OF THE CAPITALIST INDIVIDUAL: REAGAN'S IMPACT ON MASCULINIST NATIONALISM ....... 60 3.1 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 60 3.2 REAGAN'S FIRST INAUGURAL ADDRESS.................................................................... 63 3.3 THE PROTESTANT WORK ETHIC ............................................................................... 68 3.4 REAGAN’S SECOND INAUGURAL ADDRESS............................................................... 79 3.5 CONCLUSION ............................................................................................................ 84 CHAPTER 4: "AN ARMY OF ONE": MASCULINIST NATIONAL RHETORIC IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY........................................................................ 85 4.1 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................... 85 4.2 "AN ARMY OF ONE": ARMY RECRUITING FROM THE MID 1990S TO THE PRESENT..... 86 4.3 RECRUITING DOCUMENTS......................................................................................... 93 4.4 THE SOLDIER'S CREED............................................................................................ 104 4.5 CONCLUSIONS ABOUT MASCULINIST NATIONALISM, AND COMPARISONS TO EARLIER FORMS OF MASCULINIST NATIONALISM............................................................... 115 CHAPTER 5: CONCLUSION AND POSSIBILITIES............................................. 120 WORKS CITED............................................................................................................ 125 7 ABSTRACT I argue in this dissertation that U.S. rhetorics of national masculinity, while consistently present during the twentieth century, have changed shape in response to economic, social, and political crises. My research begins with the early twentieth- century Boy Scouts of America. It then moves to the late twentieth century, focusing on Ronald Reagan's inaugural speeches and the U.S. Army's campaign brochures, seeking to understand how U.S. national boundaries around masculinity have been drawn and redrawn according to political economies of the body. In these examples, the middle class struggles to define itself against realities of advancing capitalism that threaten the social capital of whiteness, manhood, and middle-class status. In chapter one, I present a literature review of masculinity, gender, and nationalism theories and an overview of my research methods. In chapter two, I present a rhetorical analysis of American masculinist nationalism at the turn of the 20th century, focusing on rhetoric that was used to develop boys and young men into masculine preservers of the nation, including training manuals from the Boy Scouts of America. I particularly concentrate on narratives of the formation and beginnings of the BSA. I connect the rhetoric of these narratives to the concurrent changes in Roosevelt’s military goals. In chapter three, I examine how, beginning with President Ronald Reagan, the economy became rhetorically tied to ideals of freedom and democracy. I argue that the effect of this rhetorical shift has been that national projects that were formerly tied to 8 national pride and service can now be executed through calls to improve the national economy or even one’s individual economic status. In chapter four, I argue that this rhetorical shift has changed the rhetoric of Army recruiting. I analyze U.S. Army recruiting brochures and surveys to argue that masculinist nationalism in this context maintains elements from early-twentieth-century masculinity, but